On the Rio Mayo Read online

head of the buck swung and its tongue lolled out of its mouth. Frank dove back into the tackle box. “He’s a Mayo, isn’t he? What the hell does he want with us?”

  Harry took a minute to absorb the way his son had said ‘he’s a Mayo’; there was a dismissive tone in his voice which Harry hated. “Coffee’s probably what he’s after,” Harry said, swinging around and watching their smoke as it left the wide chimney of the bungalow. “He wants a cup. Our smoke’s blowing inland.”

  Their visitor took the path marked with large volcanic stones straight toward the bungalow. His plans were unmistakable now; he headed straight for them, for the three trucks parked just outside the front yard and Harry’s figure standing in the truck bed. At his approach, Harry lumbered awkwardly down off the tailgate, and walking up the path part way, called out an eloquent and munificent Spanish greeting, one that Frank didn’t understand and never could repeat, though he knew the sound and could almost sing it. It was a pat phrase of Harry’s, a courtly welcome that sounded ridiculous and splendid and inimitable with its sonorous señors and numerous por favors. His words were accompanied by a bow and a circular sweep down to his feet and back to his heart of that pith helmet he wore, like a turtle under its shell, whenever they were fishing in Mexico.

  The man stopped where the rock-lined path began, outside the actual yard and beyond the trucks. He stopped as though he were too shy to approach any closer. He held the deer’s limbs in his fists: four cloven hoofs together. His long smooth face, which appeared to sprout from the very belly of the dead deer, scooped inward like a strange shovel, and showed the barest suggestion of features, a slit of brown for a mouth, narrow nostril lines above, a pair of eyes and eyebrows being the darkest. He had a thatch of thick black hair and his lips were dried and cracked. He stood a long time before them without speaking, catching his breath, his nostrils fighting the fierce wind, or perhaps overcoming his shyness. Harry smiled at him with his head tilted, waiting, expecting. As Harry had predicted, the man, when he was finally able to talk, asked, in Spanish in a voice which barely broke above a whisper, for a cup of their coffee which he had scented in the wind. He asked if they would be so kind, if it wasn’t too much trouble, if they could spare it for him, an unworthy stranger who had arrived without warning at their camp that morning.

  Harry, agreeing immediately and effusively, walked the stranger closer to their door and went in to fetch the pot, passing Frank who had got up and was leaning sullenly against the tailgate. Harry sensed that Frank disagreed with his father’s generosity.

  When Harry left, the man bent forward and pitched the deer off his shoulders. The deer carcass plopped onto the sand, its eyes closed forever, a grim smile gracing its dark brown mouth. The man squatted and his dog stood behind, eyeing the deer, but not daring even to sniff it. In the early daylight, the hound’s irises were glowing rings like those of a zombie-dog Frank remembered seeing in the Sunday comic pages. Its muzzle quivered and it whimpered from the scent of the deer or the fish bones and scraps buried in the sand around this fishing bungalow. The dogs under the truck whined back, but also didn’t dare come out. Then, the visiting dog spiraled, nose-to-tail, down to its temporary bed in the sand.

  Frank bent down and lifted the tackle case. He slid it into the truck bed. Grabbing the can of tackle and lures they had already chosen to use that morning from the truck bed, he tramped up the porch steps.

  Frank began ripping a few strips of red and yellow flannel for a different kind of lure.

  Harry reappeared struggling with three empty enamel cups, the coffeepot, a small bag of sugar and a spoon. He set everything in a row on the porch wall, poured a cup of coffee, scooped a generous spoonful of sugar into the black liquid and stirred. Steam trailed the brimming cup as he carried it down the front steps.

  Their guest took the cup in both hands. “Gracias,” he said after sipping.

  Frank leaned on a porch pillar. He ripped the flannel for a while and then stopped to scratch his stomach. He studied the crumpled buck on the sand. Once death had been rare to him, the way it is to all children because they don’t believe in it. But he’d seen a lot of it recently. He’d enlisted in the Navy at seventeen and left Arizona for training in San Diego. After that, because he was under eighteen and he’d expressed an interest in medicine, he’d been shipped to a North Chicago Naval hospital. At first they’d put him in the laundry, a warm place, something you needed in Chicago, despite the horror of working with blood-smeared sheets. But then, as the numbers of wounded increased, he’d become a night nurse in the wards, cleaning up after the parade of pieces called Marines when they were brought in from the islands of the Pacific. He’d seen every possible wound, everything a man could have torn off his body. The last year in the psychiatric ward hadn’t been much nicer; the human brain could also be shredded by war and, as the era of psychiatric drugs had yet to arrive, it fell to Frank to wrestle those men into straightjackets.

  “I’d like to know how he managed to fell the damn thing,” said Frank finally.

  Harry finished pouring himself a cup of coffee and held the pot over the third empty cup. Frank shook his head.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Harry suggested. Harry took up his cup and drank.

  “Oh, Pop, I forgot my damn Spanish.” Frank patted his shirt pocket. “Dammit to hell,” he muttered to himself, clumping down the steps to the truck. He yanked the truck door open and snatched a pack of cigarettes and a matchbook from the serape-covered seat. When he stepped out with the pack, he let the truck door fall shut behind him. “If I ever really knew any,” he added, coming back up onto the porch. “Mom never spoke it. The counselor at school told me I ought to take Latin if I wanted to be a doctor. How was I going to learn Spanish?” He didn’t add anything about his father not being around to teach him his native language. Sitting hunched on the porch wall against the side of a pillar that faced the rising sun, he yawned and shivered. He tore open the pack of cigarettes and shook one out. In an instant he struck a match and cupped his hands around it.

  “Well, try,” said Harry.

  “What’s the use? I wouldn’t be able to.”

  “Offer him a cigarette at least,” Harry responded with visible irritation.

  Mutely, Frank extended the packet of cigarettes toward their visitor.

  The man shook his head and said something in Spanish. “Not good for the air,” Harry translated. The man thumped his chest and smiled.

  The wind rose; sand pelted them. Frank looked out beyond the row of trucks at the choppy and dark ocean. Northward, over the slate water, gulls dove at the surface like indignant imps. Beyond the birds, bobbing lights, white, then red, showed the struggle of a vessel voyaging south. Hard breakers struck the shore repeatedly. They slapped down in quick collapse. High tide had brought the water to within a hundred feet of the bungalow, but it was moving out now. It was time to fish.

  Harry cleared his throat. “Where did you find this marvelous deer?” he called to the squatting figure.

  The man smiled. He was swallowing the coffee in long quaffs. “Near the mountain Ahuxlt.”

  “Ah,” Harry said, nodding.

  Frank frowned. He understood enough Spanish to know what the man’s answer had been and he signaled his disbelief in what the man had said with a slight shake of his head in Harry’s direction. Their guest blinked at the gesture, but said nothing; the dog lifted his head off the sand.

  “That’s very far from here,” Harry said, glancing into his coffee. “Have you come all that distance on this hunting trip? After this deer?”

  “Yes. Two days. Two nights.” The man gulped the coffee and wiped his mouth on his arm.

  “And you return there now with the deer?” Harry asked.

  The man smiled. “Yes, God willing.”

  Harry tossed the dregs of his coffee out onto the sand and refilled his cup.

  “How are things in your village?”

  “We are in God’s hands, probably.”

&nbs
p; “Sometimes it’s hard to tell,” said Harry with a laugh.

  “Si, si. Gracias por el cafe, señor.”

  The man swallowed his last mouthful. He rose and placed the cup on the bottom step of the porch. Harry reached over and held up the pot, ready to invite him to share another, but the man shook his head and stooped over his deer. His mutt yawned himself to his feet. The man hoisted his catch over his head and onto his shoulders. When the animal came down, the man staggered with the weight, so much so that Harry started down the steps. But as Harry moved, the visitor held out a broad palm, smiled and turned away. Shuffling forward, he gained speed until all at once he dashed away.

  “Adios!” Harry shouted.

  The sun had begun to flood the wide expanse of beach with cold morning light and now every human footprint, every bird print or tire track, dappled the surface with cold blue shadows. The clouds, passing low, suddenly opened to reveal the light, a floodlight everywhere, bright and hot. Together Harry and Frank watched the man sprint swiftly away. The thick trunk of the deer completely covered the man’s head yet the antlers could be seen jutting out from the man’s side. The lean muscles of his back showed clearly in the morning light. The Mayo and his dog headed inland.

  “Now, that was really something,” said Harry, still standing halfway down the